New album from East Sussex-based Sarah Jane Morris
Soul, jazz and r&b singer-songwriter Sarah Jane Morris is promising her “most joyously life-affirming album” yet, The Sisterhood.
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00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Reports Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this morning
00:06 to be speaking to Sarah-Jane Morris. Now Sarah-Jane, you have a wonderful sounding new album out,
00:12 The Sisterhood. What is The Sisterhood then? What are you putting across on this album?
00:18 Well during the lockdown I wanted to explore the lives of singer-songwriters, female singer-songwriters
00:24 that I felt had made a difference to musical history. Obviously it's my choice, not everyone's,
00:29 and my choice was Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Miriam McCaber, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin,
00:35 Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Ricky Lee Jones, Annie Lennox and Kate Bush. All of them totally
00:41 different and all of them came out of a much bigger number of singer-songwriters.
00:46 But the point is, this isn't a tribute where you are taking their songs and re-recording
00:51 them, you are writing songs inspired by them.
00:54 I am writing songs in their genre about them. And I wrote, musically I wrote these songs
01:01 with Tony Remy, who's my right-hand man, who actually was Annie Lennox's guitarist for
01:05 many many years. But we have very respectfully written their life stories and we have very
01:10 respectfully written the music in their genre. But it called on everything that Tony and
01:15 I had ever learned during the course of our careers and we had such fun making this album.
01:21 But I had no money because Brexit had come along which had destroyed my European career
01:25 and then Covid, so the lockdown had meant no earnings. I normally finance all of my
01:30 albums because I have my own label. So I had to think outside the box about how to fund
01:36 this. So I crowdfunded it. And I crowdfunded it by doing masterclasses where people came
01:42 from all over Europe to come and sing with me. I teach them three-part backing vocal
01:46 harmonies that they'd come and sing at Ronnie Scott's with me. That provided some of the
01:50 money for the recording. I'd bartered with Guy Chambers, Robbie Williams' co-writer.
01:55 I did sessions for him in return for studio time. I did songwriting weekends in my home
02:01 where people came to learn how to write songs with me. My husband, who's an artist, did
02:09 fine art weekends where people came to stay with us. He drew each of these singers and
02:14 we framed them and we sold them. I made things on my sewing machine and sold them.
02:19 You got there in the end. You mentioned home. Home for you is East Sussex, isn't it?
02:24 It's on C.
02:25 How long have you been there?
02:27 So I originally moved down 14 years ago. Got out of London, got divorced from an ex-pogue
02:36 and I moved down to the seaside to be near my best friend with my son. And then I met
02:43 my second husband and we lived down here for a while and then we moved just outside of
02:47 Canterbury and we moved back the summer just before Covid. So we were just sort of fitting
02:54 into our converted shop. It was a converted junk shop that we bought into our home at
03:01 the time of lockdown. So I've both decorated the home and written the life stories of 10
03:07 iconic trailblazing female singer songwriters.
03:11 Fantastic. And you narrowed that, you had an initial list of 50, you narrowed it down
03:16 to 10. Is there scope to do the next 10, do you think now?
03:21 Well I've just written two songs for the encore because we're actually doing the world
03:27 premiere of this project, not the launch of the album, the world premiere at the Caduccan
03:32 Hall on the 6th of October. And I've got a 12-piece band, I've got many amazing actresses
03:38 that are doing the introductions. But for the encores I have written songs about Patti
03:43 Smith and Sinead O'Connor because they deserve to be in that sisterhood anyway. It's just
03:49 10 made up the album.
03:50 Fantastic. Brilliant. Well congratulations, sounds a fascinating, superb project. Good
03:56 luck.
03:57 It really is. It's been such a joy.
03:59 Thank you.